The Fruits of Our Labors/A little of Last Year too!

So for some reason I have the gardening bug. I caught it last year. I guess this is something powerful and god-like about growing a garden. You take something you can barely see in the palm of your hand and your grow it into something like out here! I love my garden. I don't even eat everything in it, but I wanted to grow it. I started gardening last year and we had a lot of fun. You forget how much work it is and then you try it again. This year, for some reason and doing something I have no idea what, I hurt my back and haven't been able to do all I wanted to do in the garden. If you look close, you will see more weeds than I would like, but we did a garden, nonetheless. It is growing and it is producing. This is one of my favorite parts of the year...harvest and seeing what you have done pay off. For the most part, besides meat, I could eat every night something from my garden and I'm putting away stuff so that I can continue to do so. This is the whole thing in four sections. Everyone tells me it is huge, but I don't think it is that bad. Over in the corner is where our pumpkins and peppers are growing. I have some pumpkins on, but I don't think I'm going to get peppers...we'll see. I started this section for little seeds inside of my house. Some grew some didn't, I don't know which ones will take and what kind of pumpkins I have growing. I was a little sad because I did a bunch of melons this way too but none of them lived and I didn't plant more...so we didn't try melons this year! :-( Then I have three rows of beans. This year we decided to plant yellow and purple beans along with the normal green beans. I love color and really got into trying different colors of things this year. As you can see the purple and yellow ones are so pretty. I haven't cooked any of the colored ones up yet. They are new. So we will be trying them soon. Beans are kind of a funny thing because they are so plentiful. For six bucks, we grow enough green beans to feed us all year. I think I would become a bean farmer if I had to choose. This little suckers just keep coming. We have given away, frozen, and snapped so many beans and the funny thing is, we are just starting with them! I would hire pickers if I did own a bean farm...miserable!I'm not a few of canned beans, so most of mine I freeze. We love them that way and they taste like they are right out of the garden (for the most part!)After our beans we have peas...our peas took a hit this year maybe from all of the rain, but they have been producing fairly well in the last little while. I'm not a fan of peas except for fresh from the garden...and since I know grow my own, I can eat as many as I would like! I do freeze a few and use them a little throughout the year...but don't really care for them except for from the pod! We have have two rows of lettuce. I loved growing lettuce last year, so this year I tried a wide variety of kinds...I got kind of funky and had 21 different kinds to try. They didn't all grow, but I still went back to three favorites. The others taste bitter. I guess I haven't acquired a taste for arugala and other funky greens...yet! But they were fun and pretty to grow. I don't like the red lettuce, but it sure is pretty and gives some color so I planted a little bit this year! The green leaf is my favorite and I haven't done a very great job of harvesting it this year. I have given a bunch away, but we have only enjoyed it a few times. I need to do better before it goes bad...however, I'm thinking about growing some inside during the fall and winter! I still have a bunch of seeds...just need to find the right planter!

After our lettuce we have two and a half rows of carrots with about five different colors...We have the normal orange carrots which are very good this year, red carrots (not good), yellow carrots (not too good either, but I was told by someone who ate them, they are good cooked!), and purple carrots which are my favorite! I grew these last year and loved them. I grew white carrots last year and didn't care for them....so I didn't grow them this year.

This year I also tried four different kinds of beets. I don't even really like them, but they looked pretty. There were some yellow beats, the normal kind, a bulls-eye kind of white and red, and an elongated one that looked like a carrot! They were fun to grow and I need to figure out what to do with them! Then I have my onions and potatoes. We planted yellow and red onions (my favorite) and red potatoes and a few fingerling potatoes that I am looking forward to trying! We try to harvest these and save them into the fall and winter! It is nice to not have to buy them for a while! I'm hoping to keep them longer this year! Then we have our corn. We have 6 1/2 rows of corn. One whole row, though is decorating and popcorn corn..I hope they turn out. I have four different kinds of this growing. Then we have 5 1/2 rows of eating corn...if it turns out, we could be in for tons of corn! argh...I planted a variety of kinds this year. Last year my corn turned out, but it wasn't that great of a yield. Hopefully we can figure it out this year!

My next section is our rhubarb, strawberries, tomatoes, and ZUCCHINI! We got a whole bowl full of these! We also have some apple trees growing in this section, but I don't know if they are going to do much? We will see. I didn't pick our rhubarb soon enough, so I didn't get as much as I normally like, but I'm hoping to get a bit more from some of the younger ones. Our strawberries at first were a little rough. We did some transplanting and made some new rows and now have a whole bunch of strawberries. We have quite a few rows producing big nice berries. I've made strawberry jam, strawberry leather and will be freezing strawberries. These are not my favorite, but Andy loves them..and I'm slowly getting converted. My tomatoes look a little rough, but I have some coming on...hopefully we will be able to enjoy them...My mom though will be in tomota heaven..her plants are huge and beautiful! My favorite this year has been my ZUCCHINNI. My husband laughs because I always plant too much, but this year I did about seven different kinds of ZUCCHINNI. We laughed because at a fruit market we stopped at, you could buy 10 ZUCCHINI for 1 dollar! It is the fruitcake of the garden..you can't give it away! But I like it. I find a variety of ways to use it and I freeze it to make zucchini bread in the winter...we love that!
These are some of my different kinds of Zucchini...they are wonderful battered and fried! YUM!

Finally the last thing in my garden, but the one I love the most is my raspberry patch. They still haven't produced yet this year because they are late bloomers...They like to bloom in the fall. Last year they were so yummy! I'm holding out hope they produce like they did last year. We'll see! I haven't been able to weed and transplant as well I would have liked in my patch this year, but I see lots of buds...cross your fingers!

Finally this year I wanted to do an herb garden. It needs to be weeded which I'm going to try and do this afternoon! I grew dill for my mom..but because I wanted to also! I grew mint, peppermint, and chocolate mint which you can see below. I also grew spearamint. I just now have to figure out how to use it all! I will be drying some!

I have rosemary, thyme, pineapple sage, and lavendar! They smell so good and like above I need to learn how to use them.

Finally if you look in between the weeds you will see some fresh parsley! This was a fun new experiment! And they are perennials, so they are supposed to come back!

These are our little melons we grew last year. I was sad we didn't get any in the ground this year! These other pictures are of some of the fruits of our labors last year...I was going to post them last year and have had it saved since then, so I'm posting them now! I'm looking forward to doing all of the canning and peach season coming up.

We didn't grow cabbage last year because of worms and the smell! argh! We did grow sunflowers and I look forward to them coming out soon! They are bout 12-13 ft. tall right now, but we don't have flowers on them yet!